Why Can't You Take it to the Course?

The thumbnail shows Jon Rahm who definitely can take it to the course. But for the rest of us, why is it so difficult to translate hitting the ball beautifully on the range to hitting it beautifully on the course?

In this post about nudging the ball around I’m going to touch on some things you can incorporate, like, now, into your game to make the transition easier. But, first, let’s figure out why we go to the range at all.

The range is a great place to groove a swing. To get a sort of baseline move from where we can slightly change to produce certain ball flights. The range is typically flat and well mown or indeed, has mats. We can have a good lie every time and make sure we’re aligned correctly blah, blah, blah. It’s a place where we can put in the reps.

Putting in the reps, however, isn’t going to let you hit a soft fade to a tight pin over a bunker from 170. It will help, yes, but we need to learn the skill itself.

Here are some points to help you learn the skills on the range that will help you on course:

Practice from variable lies. Throw some balls down in the rough or where there’s a slope and hit them from where they lie. Golf is played on the course and we get all sorts out there.
Curve it. Practice hitting different shots. I really like the 3×3 grid.

I get my guys and gals to aim at the number 5 and curve it to 4 or 6. Then perhaps aim at 2 and curve to 1 and 3. Aim at 7 and curve to 9. It’s a simple and fun way of visualising the start and flight of the golf ball.

3. Call the shot. Decide what is going to happen to the ball. In this drill we don’t use words like ‘maybe’ or ‘hope’. We use words like ‘am going to’ or ‘can’ or ‘will’. “This ball is going straight at that tree with a small fade into the right half of the fairway.”

4. Play the course. Imagine you’re on the course and you play it how you’d play it normally…only thing is you’re on the range. So you have to use your imagination a bit.

5. Don’t overdo one club. I often see a worn out 7 iron and freshly grooved long clubs in bags. Practice hitting all of them. You have 14 – use them! One small caveat to that, though; You’re allowed to overdo the wedges…more reps with wedges the better!!

Sometimes it’s hard enough to just hit the ball let alone do all this other shit. But in order to take it to the course it’s absolutely necessary to learn the skills needed on the course. Make it fun – it’s game and we should be having fun. It’s Play Time!